Joseph Frazier
When thousands of Salvadorans gathered at the downtown Plaza Libertad to protest the 1977 election results, a government attack left at least 50 casualties, including Clairmont. Lore has it that as Clairmont was being loaded into a National Red Cross ambulance he was heard to say, in effect, “This is not the end. It is only the beginning.” “The beginning” only got worse. As the war gathered momentum the then-rather-lonely voice of U.S. Ambassador Robert White tried to tell Washington and Salvadorans that until mushrooming human-rights abuses were dealt with, all the agrarian and other reforms in the world weren’t going to cool off the conflict. He was recalled to Washington by the Reagan White House. Other ambassadors had delivered similar messages to deaf ears. I first wound up in El Salvador very briefly and almost by accident in late July of 1979 after the Sandinista win in Nicaragua. The airport in Nicaragua remained closed to commercial flights and leaving usually meant going to the airport and hanging out, hoping to mooch space on anything headed to where we could connect for home, which for me at the time was Mexico City. I recall seeing American and Cuban planes parked almost side by side as ground crews offloaded hand trucks full of food and other supplies, a portent of future disagreement. And there was a silver stretch DC-8 cargo jet with no markings that someone said belonged to the Salvadoran Red Cross—in retrospect, very doubtful. After some palavering we got permission to board and sat on the floor with maybe 20 other people, hanging onto ropes
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